Writers of Color 50 Books Challenge

In a fit of procrastination last night, I looked up which authors had been most frequently reviewed here. All the authors I've read are great, so if you haven't yet jumped on the bandwagon and checked them out, click on the tags.

1. Way ahead of every other author, the late great sf writer Octavia Butler has 31 reviews! If you've never read her, I would start with Wild Seed, an intense sf novel set in Africa, or Bloodchild, her collection of short stories.

2. Next is literary novelist Toni Morrison, with 18 reviews. I've only ever read Beloved, which I adored but which did give me the impression that Morrison requires a long weekend devoted only to her, with time to decompress afterward.

3. Majorie Liu is next, with 14 reviews. She writes the delightfully insane, "X-Men as genre romance" Dirk & Steele series, in which psychic agents have adventures and romances and run away to the circus and meet the Faery Queen and mermen. As one does.

4. Next comes sf writer Nalo Hopkinson and Sherman Alexie, with 13 reviews each. I haven't yet read Hopkinson, but Alexie is great and I plan to read everything he's ever written.

5. Versatile African-American writer Walter Dean Myers is next, with 12 reviews. He writes YA novels, he writes for adults, he writes gritty realism, he writes gentle comedy, he writes mythic fantasy - and everything I've read of his was at worst enjoyable, and at best brilliant.

6. Graphic novelist Shaun Tan and sf writer Tobias Buckell are next, with 11 reviews each. I haven't read either writer yet, but I mean to. Tan's wordless book The Arrival sounds amazing.

7. The extremely famous and multitalented Samuel Delany is next, with 10 reviews. I have an autobiographical graphic novel by him that he autographed at a con! Also with 10, Mildred Taylor, author of Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.

8. African-American writers Angela Johnson and Walter Mosley are next, with 9 reviews each. Johnson's The First Part Last is one of my very favorite books I read for this challenge: it packs in a disproportionate amount of beauty and feeling for its short length. I just started reading Mosley's Easy Rawlins noir series, and it's excellent.

9. Finally (I arbitrarily made a cut-off of 8 reviews), Alice Walker and President Barack Obama each have 8 reviews. Didn't she read a poem at his inauguration, or something like that? ETA: Apologies for my brain-freeze. I apparently hallucinated that her Open Letter to Barack Obama was read at the inauguration. Er, and was in verse. Also with 8 reviews, YA author Randa Abdel-Fattah.

Conclusions: African-American authors are popular around here. So are sf authors. African-American sf authors are very popular. No one is afraid of intense and dark material, but romance and teen angst is also nice. And being President doesn't hurt review counts, but writing sf might boost them even more - around here, at least. ;)